Nathan Mayberg reports in today's Register-Star that the Public Works Committee of the Columbia County Board of Supervisors voted recently to have Lothrop Associates, the architects for the courthouse renovation and expansion, design new windows for the building and get cost estimates: "Supervisors approve new windows for courthouse."
Many of the windows on the sides of the building were replaced a couple of decades ago with windows with vinyl panes that altered the intended fenestration. It would be lovely to have these inappropriate windows replaced with something that replicates the windows that were part of the original Warren & Wetmore design, but replacing all the windows in the courthouse seems rash, costly, and unnecessary. Having Lothrop Associates design the new windows is going to cost $36,200; the creation and installation of the new windows is expected to cost between $300,000 and $500,000.
The arguments for replacing windows are the usual ones. The original windows are thought to be not energy efficient, and they're old--more than a hundred years old. Although it has been demonstrated over and over that pre-World War II windows are superior to the replacement windows available today, and, with proper weather stripping, are as energy efficient as replacement windows, the message seems not to have reached the decision makers on the Board of Supervisors. They are convinced that new windows will save money on heating the building, but they have no concrete evidence how much money will be saved if any all. (Advocates for preserving historic windows calculate that, by the time the cost of replacement windows is earned back in energy savings, it's time to replace the windows again.)
Another reason for spending $300,000 to $500,000 on replacement windows is noise. It seems judges have complained about outside sounds while court is in session. The principal source of this disruptive noise is lawn mowers. Hudson supervisor Rick Scalera (Fifth Ward) had a simple, cost effective solution to the noise problem: "Mow the lawn on Saturday."
New windows could push the cost of the courthouse renovation to $9.9 million--an amount that doesn't include the additional rent that would have to be paid to the Hudson City School District if the temporary courthouse must stay in the old Claverack School beyond January 2014. In light of this latest spending decision by the Board of Supervisors, Gossips recommends Sam Pratt's post, "What does Columbia County cost?"
There's a rumor that the tenant now being pursued for the Hudson Arcade, which was originally to be Filli's Fresh Market, may be the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store. Some connection already exists between Hawthorne Valley and Galvan. In Round 3 of their grant program, the Galvan Foundation gave $10,000 to the Hawthorne Valley Association for "General funding for farm and art programs providing food related programs to children from Hudson."
The Register-Star reported late this afternoon that the people believed to have tied the starving dog to a fence beside the entrance to the Holcim dock have been arrested: "Police nab two in city dog abuse case."
Chief Edward Moore was quoted in the original article as saying, "This case was brought to a successful conclusion [due] in part to the overwhelming support provided by the community." According to Moore, "The excuse [the culprits] gave was that they were leaving their residence and they had no place to bring it." They left the dog tied to a fence where it was unlikely to be found, and they did not plan to go back for him.
The story of the arrest can also be found on Channel 6 and Channel 10.
The East Coast premiere of Fighting for Freedom, produced by and starring Kristanna Loken, along with Bruce Dern, will take place next Thursday, September 12, at Fairview Cinema 3. The movie, which was originally called Love Orchard, was filmed at Love Apple Farm in Ghent and at the Columbia County Courthouse in Hudson.
The premiere is a special screening to benefit Fairview Cinema 3 and kick off a campaign to raise money to equip two of the theater's screening rooms with DCI compliant digital projectors and sound systems--necessary if Fairview Cinema 3 is to survive. The benefit event begins at 7 p.m. with a Mexican wine and tequila tasting, accompanied by bocaditas, at neighboring Fairview Wines & Spirits. Following the tasting, the film will be shown at the theater, almost right next door, at 8 p.m. The donation requested--for the tasting and the screening--is $30 for individuals or $50 for couples.
Lance Wheeler has created a video to promote the movie premiere, which can be viewed here.
In the past few days, inspired by a mysterious object visible in the background of a photograph possibly dating from 1878, Gossips has been sharing bits of information, discovered in newspapers and Common Council minutes, from a hundred or more years ago. Today, Gossips offers two more entertaining bits of information about Promenade Hill, found in Council minutes for 1910.
April 28
Alderman Finigan stated that Promenade Hill did not have enough benches, and he moved that the matter be referred to the Commission of Public Works, with the urgent request that the Commission secure about three times as many benches as are now at that place.
Alderman Flanagan observed that if three times as many benches were secured that it would be necessary to tie some of them to the flag staff in order to find room.
[The resolution was adopted, with only Flanagan voting no.]
Gossips Note: Thomas Flanagan and Patrick B. Finigan, often at odds in Council discussions, both represented the First Ward.]
May 26
Alderman Decker stated that last year a special policeman had been appointed for service on Promenade Hill and the Common Council had made appropriation therefor. He offered the following resolution:--
Resolved, that the Police Committee be and they are hereby instructed to consider the advisability of having a special policeman for the summer to maintain order on Promenade Hill, the expense of securing such policeman, if thought advisable by the Committee, not to exceed $75.
[The resolution was adopted unanimously.]
Last Thursday, when this mysterious floating object appeared in riverfront park, Gossips was told by DPW superintendent Rob Perry that it was "taking samples of the river bottom for the 2014 remediation."
It seems that the 2014 remediation--Phase 2 of the coal tar cleanup in riverfront park--may be starting now. (Phase 1, done in 2004, was the upland remediation; Phase 2 is the underwater remediation.) Spotted on the waterfront this afternoon was this vessel, which Gossips takes to be a hydraulic dredge.
You can check the accuracy of my identification of this floating contraption, learn how it works, and maybe get more comfortable about its presence on our waterfront by visiting the Clearwater website, where you will find a webpage devoted to environmental dredging.
Gossips has just learned that Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed the legislation enabling a school to be established at 364 Warren Street. The news is already being reported by News10 in Albany, which had a crew in Hudson earlier today taping an interview at the site with HCSD superintendent Maria Suttmeier.
On May 3, 2012, Galvan Partners applied for a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Commission to move the two-hundred-year-old house at 900 Columbia Street to 215 Union Street. The application was quite specific that the intention was to move the house. It even named the contractor that would perform the feat: Wolfe House Movers.
This is a house being moved. The picture above shows a house being moved in Butler, Pennsylvania, and is from the Wolfe House Movers website.
This is a house being demolished. The picture above shows the house at 900 Columbia Street being "disassembled" by Mountainview Masonry and Landscape Supply and was taken on September 2.
Steve Walsh informed Gossips early this morning that today, September 3, is the 108th anniversary of the collision of Young America and George H. Power. Learning this inspired Gossips to turn to Fulton History to find out more. Among the discoveries was the following article from the Syracuse Evening Telegram for September 4, 1905, which explains what happened.
COLLISION ON THE HUDSON
Rival Boats, Due in Hudson City Together, Crash While Racing in Channel.
A WILD PANIC ENSUES.
Hudson, N.Y., Sept. 4--Three woman, one a New Yorker, returning from the funeral of her husband, were drowned in the Hudson river last evening when the little propeller Young America, on which they were passengers, was sunk by collision with the ferryboat George H. Power.
Others of the twenty-five passengers on the Young America narrowly escaped, for she sank almost immediately after being struck by the Power's paddlewheel.
The Victims
Mrs. Mary Bedell, 477 West One Hundred and Forty-second street, New York city.
Miss Sarah Brown, 20 years of, 24 Van Buren street, Brooklyn.
Mrs. Margaret McCabe, Coxsackie.
Mrs. Bedell and Mrs. McCabe were still alive when taken from the river, but all attempts to resuscitate them failed. Miss Brown's body has not been recovered.
The boats were racing in a narrow channel, near the Hudson lighthouse, in the middle of the river below the city.
The lighthouse is just below the flats which stretch along the river for a considerable distance at this point, and there is a dugway cut out between the lighthouse and the flats, which is used by vessels, this saving a wide sweep, around the lighthouse.
Tried to Cut Across.
Both boats were due here at the same time, and the Young American [sic] tried to cut across her larger rival's bows, it is reported. A great gash was cut in her and she soon sank.
That more were not drowned is due solely to the fact that the Young America's upper deck and the Power's main deck were practically on a level. More than a dozen escaped from the smaller boat by stepping from one deck to another before the boats drifted apart.
Mrs. Bedell and her son were returning from her husband's funeral at Coxsackie. Young Bedell could not swim, and he stood on the upper deck of the sinking boat, shouting to those on the ferry-boat to save her. Later in the evening he was taken to the Hudson Hospital, were he now is. He was nearly crazed by grief when he learned of his mother's death.
Miss Palmer, a cousin of Bedell, was rescued and taken to the City hospital here. She is suffering from shock. Miss Caldwell of Brooklyn, and Miss May Brown, Miss Sarah's sister, are also at the hospital, but it is expected they can leave today.
Small boats put out from here, as did a launch from the lighthouse, and rescued nine or ten persons, among them William S. Hallenbeck, mayor of Hudson; Carl Rowley of Brookyn and Prof. Henry H. Esselstyn of the Brooklyn Polytechnic institute.
None of the Young America's crew was drowned. Her pilot was Alexander Rainey, who three days ago left the Catskill Hudson steamer Isabella after a service of twenty-four years; Engineer Morris Webber and a deckhand named Leonard Edwards. Ernest McKnight of Athens was the Powers' pilot.
According to accounts of the collision in the New York Press and the New York Sun, there was a fourth victim: Jennie L. Bedell, daughter of Mrs. Mary Bedell and sister of Webster Bedell, the young man who survived.
The report in the New York Press, which identified Mary Bedell and Jennie L. Bedell as sisters rather than mother and daughter, alleged that no effort was made to rescue the drowning women.
. . . from all that has been gathered the crew of the craft did nothing to save them. Investigation is to be made to learn what became of the lifeboats, lifebelts and liferaft on the Young America, and to clear the mystery of why one of the several floating appliances on the vessel was not brought into use to float the young women for a few minutes until a rowboat had put back from the ferry.
200 SEE THEM DROWN.
The accident was witnessed by about 200 passengers on the Power, and there were pathetic scenes when it was seen the four girls were drowning. About half of the passengers were women, and they grew frantic at the tragic sight, some of them in the excitement actually battling with members of the crew to jump into the river in the frenzied hope of effecting a rescue. When at last the water sped smoothly over the heads of the lost girls a score of women fell fainting to the deck of the ferry, and the utmost excitement prevailed until the vessel was in Hudson. Then, when the passengers had left the Power, they gathered in the street and denounced the captain for having raced and thereby invited disaster. It was said by many that they would volunteer as witnesses in any action that might be taken.
Action was taken. Although Alexander Rainey, the pilot of Young America, claimed that the accident was unavoidable because he had been "thrown out of his reckoning by the tide," the Albany Evening Journal reported on September 16, 1905, that his license and that of the pilot of the George H. Power had been revoked.
WILL NOT STEER BOATS ANY MORE
Pilots of Young America and George H. Power Held Responsible.
Andrew Gaul and Robert B. Keller, local inspectors of steam vessels, this morning sent to Captain Ira Harris, at New York, their decision in the matter of the investigation into the collision of the Young America and the George H. Power. They revoked the licence of the pilots of both boats on the grounds that they were guilty of "reckless navigation and the violation of the rules of navigation."
The pilot of the Young America is Alexander Rainy [sic], of Athens, and the pilot of the other boat is Ernest McKnight, also of Athens. Rainy, the inspectors find, did not blow his whistle when approaching the George H. Power and both pilots failed to take the [illegible] precautions to prevent the collision, which resulted in the death of four persons.
As a footnote to this story, Hudson's first Mayor William Hallenbeck was rescued from the collision, but six months later, on March 6, 1906, The New York Times reported that he dropped dead on the way to his office in City Hall.
Photograph of the George H. Power ferry slip courtesy Historic Hudson
The presence of a mysterious object in the background of this stereoscopic image of Parade Hill has inspired investigation into and speculation about what it was.
Michael O'Hara speculated, in a comment on yesterday's post, that the structure may have been a "public weather station," enabling people to see the direction and speed of the wind at the riverfront from almost any point in the city. A report on a Common Council meeting that appeared in the Hudson Evening Register on August 9, 1898, indicates that at that time, there was no flagpole on Promenade Hill, although there was a lot of talk about putting one there. At the time, an ad hoc committee had solicited estimates for a flagpole with and without a weather vane.
Pursuing the possibility of a weather vane, Chad Weckler guided Gossips to the following report on the Common Council meeting that took place in April 1901. The report, which appeared in the Hudson Evening Register for April 26, 1901, tells of a resolution having to do with the flag staff on Promenade Hill, which was vetoed by then mayor Charles S. Harvey.
[Gossips Note: Back when I was reading Common Council minutes from 1909 and 1910, searching for any mention of the Hudson-Fulton fountain, I was struck by how often the mayor at the time, James C. Armstrong, vetoed Common Council actions. This seems to have been common at that time. In April 1901, his predecessor, Charles Harvey, vetoed a total of four Council resolutions. Our interest is with just one of them.]
Hudson, April 15, 1901.
To the Common Council:
Gentleman:--I do hereby disapprove of the resolution offered by Ald. Roach and passed by your honorable body on April 11, 1901, which reads as follows:
Resolved, That the Fire committee be authorized to have the flag staff on Promenade hill cleaned and painted and raised and a larger weather vane placed on the same at an expense not to exceed $60.
My reason for disapproving of this is that I have been informed by different contractors that make a business of this line of work that this work can be done for less than half of the amount appropriated. Two years ago this same work was done for $25 as the proceedings of the Common Council show, and I cannot seen the necessity of appropriating this amount, and do hereby veto the same.
Charles S. Harvey, Mayor
Ald. Roach stated that he was in favor of having the flag-staff repaired and re-gilded twice this summer if necessary, as thousands of people would pass along the river this year on their way to the Pan-American. The weather-vane had been enlarged and the flag-staff instead of receiving a coat of paint, would receive two coats of milk-white paint. Every day during the summer the flag should fly from its high altitude, the same as was done at Washington's headquarters in Newburgh. Travelers seeing Old Glory flying would make inquires as to what city it was and it would certainly help keep Hudson in their minds. The original motion was then passed over the Mayor's veto by the same vote as the first vote--8 to 2.
The "Pan-American" mentioned by Alderman Roach was the Pan-American Exposition that took place in Buffalo from May 1 to November 2, 1901. Buffalo, then the eighth largest city in the country, was selected as the site for the exposition because of its railway connections, and a great feature of the event was the Electric Tower and many other buildings covered with light bulbs and illumined by the hydroelectric power generated at Niagara Falls.
It was at the Pan-American Exposition that President William McKinley was assassinated, shot twice by Leon Czolgosz on September 6 and ultimately dying on September 14 from infection and gangrene.
The University at Buffalo website is a rich source of information about the Pan-American Exposition, and you can make your own virtual visit at a website called Doin' the Pan. If you like to experience history through historical fiction, City of Light, by Lauren Belfer, published in 1999, is set in Buffalo during the Pan-American Exposition and does a good job of creating a sense of time and place.
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Next Saturday, September 7, BeLo 3rd, the organization founded in 2009 to increase awareness of the shops, art galleries, restaurants, and other businesses below Third Street, is presenting its fifth Taste of Hudson. This eagerly awaited annual gourmet feeding frenzy takes place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., under a tent, in the 200 block of Warren Street. Early arrival is, as always, recommended.
Meanwhile, at the other end of Warren Street, in the neighborhood that calls itself Hudson's East End, much is happening. The new streetlamps are being installed, and DPW superintendent Rob Perry reports that they should be "energized" in October. The Crimson Sparrow recently celebrated its first anniversary, and so has the art supply and stationery shop Sketch. Two other East End businesses will soon pass the one year mark: Stoddard Corner Bookshop, in October, and Bonfiglio & Bread, in November. Valley Variety, the retail shop offering "Tools for everyday tasks"™ coming to the former Sweeps building at 705 Warren, got a certificate of appropriateness for its signage from the Historic Preservation Commission last month and is expected to open soon. There is word of two new art galleries opening in the neighborhood--one at 745 Warren Street and the other next door, in the former Neefus Photography Studio at 743 Warren Street--and we await more news about Hudson Anchor, the food emporium expected to offer fresh local produce, fish, meat, and prepared foods at 752 Warren Street, in the building where years ago Hudson City Crescent Garage sold Packards and other automobiles and more recently Ackerman's sold expensive kitchen appliances.
More news from Hudson's East End--Animalkind, whose facility at 721 Warren Street was severely damaged by a fire in May 2012, is having a grand opening of its "totally renovated, cat-friendly, completely awesome" adoption center on Sunday, September 15, from 2 to 4 p.m. Everyone is invited, but those planning to attend should RSVP online or leave a message at (917) 697-6301.
I just got a call from a neighbor (bless her heart), worried that the Gossipsmobile, parked on the odd side of the street when tomorrow is an even day, might get ticketed. For anyone else with similar concerns, know that the eve of Labor Day is one of the eight holidays on which alternate side of the street parking is suspended. As a reminder for the future, here's the whole list, provided to Gossips last year by Common Council president Don Moore. Note that these are all the eves of the holidays:
- New Year's Day
- Presidents' Day
- Martin Luther King Day
- Memorial Day
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Thanksgiving Day
- Christmas Day
Tomorrow is the last day of the Columbia County Fair for 2013--the 173rd annual Columbia County Fair. Fittingly, a reader just sent me the link to an article from The New York Times for September 26, 1863, which provides the information that 150 years ago, the Columbia County Fair took place not in Chatham, as it does today, but in Hudson.
The fairgrounds in Hudson were located just west of Fairview Avenue and north of Oakwood Boulevard, around the site of the Montgomery C. Smith School. In fact, Fairview Avenue got its name not because it afforded a belle vue or a buena vista but because you could see the fairgrounds from there, and Paddock Place was named not for the Paddock family, Stephen Paddock being one of the original Proprietors, but because the paddocks for the horses at the fairgrounds were located there.
A year earlier, in September 1862, the Hudson fairgrounds were the site of Camp Kelly, where the 128th Regiment was organized and mustered into service to fight for the Union in the Civil War.
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The picture of the fairgrounds, which is probably later than 1863, is from Historic Hudson's Rowles Studio Collection.
Earlier this summer, Peter Pehrson acquired for his Stoddard Corner Bookshop the remaining inventory from New York Bound, the bookshop dedicated to rare, out-of-print, and new books and ephemera related to New York history, located, until 1997, in the lobby of 50 Rockefeller Plaza. Among the treasures in that collection, Pehrson recently discovered this stereoscopic view of Promenade Hill, back in the day when it was called Parade Hill.
Gossips has shared this image before, although not in stereoscopic form, then focusing on the stairs that appear to be going down the face of the bluff. That stair or ladder and the absence of the iron fence led to the conclusion that the men in the picture are masons and laborers working on the retaining wall and this picture was probably taken in 1878, the year the retaining wall was constructed and the iron fence installed.
The stereoscopic image seems to draw more attention to this mysterious object in the background and makes one wonder what it is. Pehrson mused that the picture is too early for this to be a radio tower and the structure seems too small to be a fire tower--even if it's possible to believe that such a thing would ever have been sited on Parade Hill. Gossips' guess is that this structure is some kind of elaborate scaffolding around a flag pole--either one in the process of being erected or one that had been there for a while and required some additional support.
The colorized engraving below, from Wade & Croome's 1846 Panorama of the Hudson River from New York to Albany, discovered and published by The Valley Alliance back in 2011, shows a flag pole on Parade Hill in 1846. A newspaper article discovered by Gossips indicates that in 1898, there was no flag pole on Promenade Hill and the Common Council seemed uncertain about who had the responsibility or authority to put one there. One wonders what the situation of the flag pole was in 1878, if the picture that inspired this rumination was in fact dates from 1878.
Graham Farrell has performed a number of concerts for the benefit of Hudson's very visible, very needy First Presbyterian Church, and his latest will take place on Saturday, September 7, at 6 p.m. Entitled Opera Goes to Church, the concert features "Cherished Chestnuts from the Romantic Repertoire"--familiar arias from the operas of Verdi, Bizet, and Puccini--performed on the church's 1927 Austin organ. The $15 admission charge goes to the restoration of the historic church building.
Still fascinated by the story of how this Henry Ary painting had been found, in the 1950s, in the attic of 259 Union Street, Gossips decided to learn more about the Pundersons, the family who had lived in the house at the turn of the century.
A search on the Internet was instantly rewarded by the discovery of a biography of James M. Punderson, from Biographical Review: Columbia County, NY, published in 1894, which a modern-day Punderson had posted on Ancestry.com in February 2002.
James M. Punderson was born in Hudson in 1822 and educated here. When he was 15, he began a career as a "teller and cashier," which he pursued for 18 years in Rochester and Buffalo before returning to Hudson in 1855. At the time the biography was published, in 1894, Punderson was a prominent coal dealer in Hudson and lived at 259 Union Street with his wife, Mary, and two of their five children: an unmarried son, Russell, and a daughter, Louise, "still a a young lady at home." Eighteen years later, in 1912, Punderson it seems had passed on, but his wife, Mrs. James M. Punderson, still lived at 259 Union Street with her still unmarried children, Russell and Louise.
This comment about the Pundersons, from the biography written in 1894, when James would have been 72, suggests that they may have been the sort of couple who, in their younger years, had acquired a painting by a local artist: "Mrs. James M. Punderson is a very pleasant and amiable lady, who time has touched very gently, she and her husband being a very active and intelligent couple, in the fullest enjoyment of life's evening after the heat and burden of the day."
The 1894 biography of James M. Punderson contains a fair amount of genealogical information. What may be most interesting to Hudsonians is who their maternal grandparents were. James M. Punderson's mother was the daughter (one of four) of Dr. John Talman and Heroine Jenkins, who were married in 1785 and were among the first settlers of Hudson. Mary Mellen Punderson's mother, born in 1795, was the daughter of Robert Taylor, who "came from Newport, R.I., among the earliest settlers, and destined to become a prominent mfr. as well as a foremost citizen." Although the house of his granddaughter and her husband was demolished decades ago, Robert Taylor's house survives at the head of Tanners Lane.
Historic photo of the Robert Taylor House courtesy Historic Hudson
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By now, everyone has probably heard this awful story. The Register-Star first reported it yesterday afternoon. All the Albany TV stations reported it on the news last night and this morning--Channel 6, Channel 10, and Channel 13.
Police discovered this dog, said to be a pit bull/boxer mix, tied to the inside of the fence bordering the Holcim dock down at the waterfront, shortly after midnight on Friday morning. The dog had been starved and then apparently left to die--tied where it was unlikely to be easily spotted and rescued.
The dog is now at the Columbia-Greene Humane Society and is expected to recover from the ordeal, but the police want to find the person responsible. The TV news coverage provides many more pictures of the dog, and there are pictures posted at the Hudson police station in the 400 block of Warren Street. If you recognize this dog and know its owner, please let the police know. You can submit the information anonymously at (518) 828-3388 or on the detectives' tip line at (518) 828-9900 or online by clicking here.
In its continuing campaign to Save the Land That Matters Most, Scenic Hudson has acquired 173 scenic and ecologically significant acres along the main channel of South Bay Creek, which flows into the Hudson River through South Bay. A portion of the newly acquired property is in the Olana viewshed.
The map below shows the location of the 173 acres--in Greenport, just west of Route 9. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) Scenic Hudson's announcement of the acquisition can be read here.
As the days pass, it gets harder and harder to see how what's happening to 900 Columbia Street is anything other than demolition. This is what the house looks like today.
Alongside the house, there is now a big pile of bricks, suggesting that part of the south wall either fell down or was pushed, but in the empty window frame above the door, the flag is still there. God bless America.
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The three post card images of the Hudson Armory that Gossips published on Wednesday inspired Chad Weckler to send another post card image. This one includes glimpses of the buildings to the north and west of the armory.
Weckler informed Gossips that this post card and others are available for sale at culture+commerce project, 428 Warren Street.
Two weeks ago, when grant consultant John "Duke" Duchessi told the Common Council Economic Development Committee that he was working on a grant application to get a bomb-sniffing dog for the Hudson Police Department, it seemed like a bad idea induced by Homeland Security paranoia and the lure of free federal money. John Mason reports in today's Register-Star that, on Monday, HPD chief L. Edward Moore pitched the same idea to the Police Committee: "City looks to get bomb-sniffing dog." It was reported that, in making the case for a bomb-sniffing dog, Moore stressed "the ability of canines to break down barriers in the community," suggesting that "people like to interact with dogs."
The totally unscientific, anecdotal evidence of someone who has walked a big dog in Hudson for the past fourteen years suggests otherwise. Back in the day when the HPD had a K-9 unit, it was not uncommon to encounter kids--and adults--who reacted to a large dog with irrational, hysterical terror. When the K-9 unit was eliminated in 2007, those kinds of encounters tapered off and now rarely happen. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Maybe . . . or maybe not.
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In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, a chess problem is a guiding narrative structure of the plot. In an episode of The West Wing, the intricate chess games that President Jed Bartlet plays with Sam and Toby mirror the subtle diplomatic game he is playing with the Chinese government. Chess is a game of intellect and sophistication, and those who fancy themselves intellectual and sophisticated really should know how to play the game.
If your life achievements thus far do not include chess mastery, fear not. There is an opportunity to correct that. Tonight, at the Hudson Opera House, Chris Chanin will conduct a one-session introductory chess workshop just for adults, and it is free. The workshop begins at 7 p.m. and runs until 9 p.m. There is still time to register by calling (518) 822-1438 or sending an email.
Fall is nearly upon us--time for the annual CHIPS (Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program) repaving project in Hudson. At the Common Council Public Works Committee meeting on Wednesday, DPW superintendent Rob Perry announced the streets that will be milled and paved in 2013.
First Street, from Union to Columbia
Third Street, from Warren to Columbia
City Hall Place, from Warren to Union
Fifth Street, from State to Warren
East Allen Street, from South Fifth to East Court
Sixth Street, from Union to State
McKinstry Place, from Columbia to Green
Paddock Place, from Oakwood to Paddock
Oakwood Boulevard., from Paddock to Parkwood
Seventh Street, from Warren to Union
The project is expected to start soon after September 6 and be completed by November 1. No further information about scheduling is available at this time.
This morning, a reader sent Gossips this picture of a strangely equipped barge tied up in one of the slips at riverfront park.
Curious, Gossips consulted DPW superintendent Rob Perry, who explained that it was there "taking samples of the river bottom in preparation for the 2014 remediation."
This is the project we learned about back in February 2012--the underwater remediation of the coal tar that lingers from the 19th-century Hudson Gasification Works. Phase 1--the upland remediation--was done in 2004. Phase 2 was expected to start this fall, but it seems from Perry's comment that it has been postponed until next year.
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Photo credits: Robert Mechling and Peter Jung
After many fits and starts and feasibility studies and spending $1.5 million for the old Ockawamick School, a building no one wanted, the Columbia County Board of Supervisors finally decided, in May 2012, to buy 25 Railroad Avenue, the building that the county had been leasing for twenty years for the Department of Social Services. The price was $1.288 million, 29 percent more than the price allegedly offered to the City of Hudson a year or so earlier, and there was never an explanation of why the county had to pay more.
Now we learn that Paul Mossman, commissioner for social services, wants to spend another $3 to $5 million to "upgrade the building and expand the parking lot." The parking lot expansion alone is expected to cost almost half a million dollars. Nathan Mayberg has the whole story in today's Register-Star: "DSS chief backs $3 to $5 million upgrade project."
John Mason reports in today's Register-Star that the legislation enabling a school to open at 364 Warren Street is expected to reach Governor Andrew Cuomo's desk on Tuesday, one day before the school year begins: "Report: Cuomo to sign alt. ed. school into law." Of course, it's not going to be the program originally planned. The school, in the heart of Hudson's commercial district, will exist to educate twelve special education students who had previously been bused as day students to Berkshire Union Free School.
Gossips missed a day in documenting the "disassembling" (some might call it the demolition) of 900 Columbia Street, but here is how the building looked at about 7 p.m. today.
That little American flag stuck in the window opening over the front door is such a nice touch. It should make us all feel proud.
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